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When I was younger, I had a boxed copy of Final Fantasy III for Super Nintendo that I bought, used, at a video store, for $12. It came loose in its retail box, no manuals or maps. I decided it would be better to put the game into a spare plastic game case that I had, and I did it, and then I decided I should probably cut the box it came in into pieces to decorate the plastic case, and then I did that too.

Shigeru Miyamoto plays Angry Birds. That means he has a smart phone. Someone else at Nintendo probably has a phone too and on that phone they’ve downloaded a gaming app and seen online leaderboards or asynchronous multiplayer. Heck, they’ve probably seen live multiplayer. Someone over there is probably playing an online game right now. On a phone. So why is it, in 2012, that Nintendo still doesn’t seem to understand how to develop appropriate online systems for their own consoles and games?

I have to admit, I have kind of an obsession when it comes to nerdy video game-themed playing cards, which are called "trump" for some reason here in the mighty land of Pikachu. One of my most favorite sets is these now-topical bad boys, the Dragon Quest Playing Cards! Unlike a lot of uninspired game cards that only featured themed backs or special facecards, every single card in this set is special!

Have you ever noticed that more than a few Nintendo games from the mid- to late-80s bear more than a passing resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger's seminal action movie Commando? It's not exactly news, but you can even see two Arnolds on the western NES release boxart for Contra, starring against each other (his Predator incarnation on the left, and his Commando incarnation on the right). Down to identical veins and little vest hooks!

Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to just play games without even thinking about them. What it would be like to do anything without thinking about it is probably what it would be like to play games without thinking. What do I do on a daily basis that I don't think about like someone who's thinking about it? Maybe eating, when I eat something I don't always wonder how it was made.

The more often I'm compelled to buy crappy drinks in order to obtain video game-related trinkets, the more often I wonder whether what I'm doing really involves my mouth. With the release of Dragon Quest X imminent (no seriously, it comes out tomorrow), Square Enix has partnered up with Pepsi and their atrocious low-calorie Pepsi Nex soft drink to promote the game in its native land of Japan. With certain drinks it's easy to tell who's getting the bum deal, like when the drink is way better than the toy that's attached, like maybe Boss Coffee sticks a shitty F1 racecar onto it.

Living in Japan has its drawbacks. In the age of total region-lock, I'm forced to turn to costly American 3DS cartridge imports, overpay on shipping, and wait forever for my games to arrive. I'm stuck paying exorbitant Japanese prices for PS3 games, the oh-so-beautiful Ghibli Blu-rays, and pizza (also the pizza has mayonnaise on it). And I also live in a little box the size of a deck of playing cards.

With New Super Mario Bros. 2 around the corner, I find myself looking forwards to grabbing as many coins as I can. It will be an accomplishment, this coin-mongering! It is an exceedingly score-focused game, all about seeing how well you can do, how much scratch you can accrue. And yet, I can't help but feel isolated by it—by the knowledge that any of the scores I compete against will be my own.

As Japan wriggles in the grip of gold fever (both via the race for medals in the London Olympics and the race for coins in the just-released New Super Mario Bros. 2), I can't help but try and shake the onset of this very same disease in me, committed as I am to my American-version 3DS system. Like the common cold, I feel it creeping up on me, little by little.

A couple beers in and my stomach full I decide the best way to kill some time in evening-clothes Kobe is to head to the arcade I frequent, they got Street Fighter III up on the second floor and it's fifty yen a play. It's one of the most reliable bets in town when I'm looking to obliterate some minutes since the machines are set easy and my coin can roll me through a lot of dudes.